


the private cave of the mouth

by sepithet



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-11
Updated: 2018-03-11
Packaged: 2019-03-29 23:41:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13937943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sepithet/pseuds/sepithet
Summary: Ben was the worst lay of Rey’s life, and Rey should know because she’s had her fair share of hasty hookups and one night stands to last her a lifetime. This is why when she’s at a club late Friday night, or possibly early Saturday morning, and Poe walks Ben over—a mile tall, with his big hands and plush lips and that awkward hunch to his shoulders like a puppy waiting to be kicked—Rey hears a warning siren go off in her head. Tonight was supposed to be uncomplicated fun; drinks, music, and absolutely no hooking up.





	the private cave of the mouth

Ben was the worst lay of Rey’s life, and Rey should know because she’s had her fair share of hasty hookups and one night stands to last her a lifetime. This is why when she’s at a club late Friday night, or possibly early Saturday morning, and Poe walks Ben over—a mile tall, with his big hands and plush lips and that awkward hunch to his shoulders like a puppy waiting to be kicked—Rey hears a warning siren go off in her head. Tonight was supposed to be uncomplicated fun; drinks, music, and absolutely no hooking up.

“Don’t do it, sis,” Finn says, right up in Rey’s ear. He grips Rey’s shoulder, like he’s trying to fortify her. He’d made her swear on her iPhone and a stack of Maya Angelou poetry that her days of dickmitization were over and Rey had vehemently agreed. At the time.

“I’m not,” Rey says, nodding her head vehemently. “It’s not happening, man. I’m not gonna do it.”

A blink later and Rey’s doing it; tongue wrestling Ben in a bathroom stall, hands fisted in Ben’s shirt and the door rattling against the lock with every move. Rey is drunk. She can feel it; pleasantly blood-hot, a low buzz under her skin. In any other context, there’s no way Rey would have ever spent more than two seconds in Ben’s vicinity. Ben’s inexperience is painfully obvious, for one. He hits her nose with _his_ nose the first few times she tries to lock lips until she grabs his jaw and shows him how it’s done, licking into that wide mouth that she’d honed on as soon as he’d come into view.

Second, Rey had the feeling right away that if they’d met in any other context they’d have nothing to talk about. And fourth, or third, whatever: the kid won’t shut up. Rey decides the best course of action is to keep kissing him until he does. Ben is going on about the schematics to a bike he’s building in someone’s garage, and how the bar decor reminded him of some place he’d been to in Ibiza.

_No one fucking cares_ , Rey wants to say, and also _who goes to fucking Ibiza._ Rey doesn’t think she could point it out on a map. But her mouth is busy and she’s so turned on she’s already straddling one of Ben’s big thighs and rubbing lazily against him, her groin going hot and heavy. She hears his breathing go fast and his big hands tighten around her waist. She slides a hand down his front and finds him hard already. She rubs the heel of her hand against his length and hears him fucking whimper against her lips. He breaks away from the kiss with a shaky gasp. For some inexplicable reason it makes Rey’s blood go hot, the pliant way his big body melts against her, fingers clutching at her helplessly.

She keeps kissing at Ben, sucking at his lips while feeling like she’s wrangling a fish on a line because Ben won’t stop moving. His hands slide up Rey’s forearms to her shoulders and his hips jolt as she massages at his dick. He lets out a squeak when Rey finds his nipple through his shirt and rubs at it, a far more interesting sound than the last five minutes of story-time.

“Wanna take this back to my place?” Rey asks. She’s buzzed, feeling generous, and already anticipating having Ben inside her, idiotic talk be damned. He’s so fucking big already and not even fully hard yet. She can barely wait for the real thing.

“Um, yes? Sure. Yeah,” Ben says in quick succession, eyes wide. There’s a flush at the high points of his cheeks and he looks down at her like he isn’t quite sure what he’s hearing.

“Cool,” Rey says, smug. She’s already got the rest of the night mapped out in her mind. She’ll make him eat her out first and maybe she’ll fuck him—he’s already showing all the promising signs of being putty in her hands--then an Uber at the door and Rey can sleep until noon.

All in a night’s work.   

*

“You did it,” Finn says, the next morning. He sets a mug of coffee down on Rey’s dresser with a sound like a clap of thunder.

“Oh my fuck,” Rey mumbles out. She’s strewn haphazardly across her bed, comforter tangled around her torso. She whimpers and grabs for a pillow, stuffing it over her face to block the bolts of pain radiating in her skull.

She hears the creak of Finn’s footsteps as he walks to the window beside her bed, the clatter of the shades been drawn up unfathomably loud, sending daggers plunging into Rey’s brain. Her tongue is thick and unwieldy and her mouth tastes like something died in it.

“Oh dear god, turn the fucking lights off. Why are the lights so goddamn bright?”

“The lights are the sun, Rey. I can’t turn off the sun,” Finn says.

“You could at least _try_ ,” Rey whines out, voice emerging muffled. Her own breath bounces back against her nose within her pillowy confines and she makes a face, sitting up with a groan.

“Why are you torturing me?” Rey asks. She pushes back at the hair that’s fallen over her face and squints blearily at Finn’s figure. He’s mostly a blurry, unimpressed looking figure just now, as she blinks hard to adjust her eyesight.

“Did you sleep with him?” Finn asks, sipping from his own coffee mug. He somehow manages to make it a particularly self-righteous and accusatory sip and it makes Rey scowl.

“ _No_ ,” she replies, shoving at a coil of comforter wrapped around her waist like a python. Technically, she hadn’t _slept_ with him, being that she’d woken up alone and all. She’d fucked Ben, yes, and it had been a-fucking-mazing. He’d been a strange mixture of clumsy and eager and it had made Rey hot all over, getting to lead him around, watching the way his mouth fell open as she’d finally straddled him and sank down.

“Ew,” Finn says, cutting Rey’s reminiscing short.

“I didn’t even say anything!” Rey splutters, realizing she’d been frozen in place, hands gripping her sheets and god-knows-what happening on her face.

“You don’t have to say I can just—” Finn makes a wavey-pointy gesture towards Rey and shoves off the dresser. He turns towards the door and starts walking out, shaking his head the whole way.

“Sex is a beautiful thing!” Rey shouts after him, groaning immediately as a lance of pain flares up from deep in her skull. She reaches a hand out blindly and swallows the aspirin Finn’s left for her with a gulp of hot coffee. Oh, that’s good.

“You have a shift in twenty,” Finn calls out from somewhere in the apartment. “And you better not call that poor sod!”

*

Rey has enough time to slam back her coffee and get dressed in a frantic whirlwind before she’s out the door and clambering down three flights of stairs. The wind bites at her nose and cheeks as she rushes towards her stop, dead leaves skittering underfoot. She catches her train just in time, winding her arm around a metal pole while she thumbs through her phone. _No new contacts_ , she thinks smugly, _take tha_ t. She was perfectly capable of having safe, responsible, one-night stands without getting entangled with yet another douche. The two didn’t have to go hand-in-hand; relationships and sex. She could still take a break from all the drama and entanglement and still get laid. She could do this.

She’s a minute away from her stop, already heading towards the doors, when her phone pings in her pocket. Then pings again, and again. Rey reaches for it with dread building in her gut.

There are three new texts from a new contact Rey had somehow missed in her earlier perusal. Probably because there was no name inputted, just a series of fireworks and eggplant emojis.

**hey** , the first text reads.

**i reeally enjoyed last night**

**can I see you again ?? :)**

Rey groans so loudly she startles a pair of tweens, clearly skipping school.

“Fuck,” she says out loud, then, “sorry.” Then, “fuuuuuck.”

 *

The head librarian takes one look at Rey and waves her back to the stacks. Rey breathes a sigh of relief. That last thing she wants to do is face people and talk to people and smile at people for the next eight hours, or possibly ever again.

“That’s just cause you’ve been poorly socialized,” Poe had said one night, interrupting Rey’s bitching about a particularly horrendous patron.

“Thanks,” Rey had replied, dryly.

“No problemo,” Poe had said, flashing a brilliant smile and completely missing Rey’s tone. Poe was over for movie night at Finn’s request, the pair of them curled up on the couch like actual lovebirds, while Rey shoveled popcorn into her mouth and stared resolutely at the screen.

Rey rolls her eyes just thinking about it, and slots another book in its proper place.

It’s not that Rey doesn’t believe in relationships, she just doesn’t believe in relationships _for her_. She’d tried it, given it a solid shot, and it had ended in ruin; with her heart broken and weeks spent bursting into tears at the most inopportune moments. It was embarrassing and terrible and Rey had promised herself she’d never do it again.

Sex on the other hand was something else. She didn’t have to invest if it was just sex, she didn’t have to care or let herself be wounded ever again, and they could both get off. She, her hookups, and their libidos could all win.

Rey lasts about a day before she’s texting Ben back. She suggests coffee at her place which turns into her grabbing Ben as he’s standing at the door, then pressing him back with kisses and a firm hand until she’s straddling him on the living room sofa.

She’d found Ben standing in the center of the welcome mat when she’d answered the door, hands shoved in his jacket pockets. He’d dressed appropriately for the weather; a charcoal grey beanie covering most of his hair, dark jeans, and a pair of sturdy boots.

“Uh, hi,” Ben had said, grinning. His teeth were crooked, Rey had realized, in a way Rey tries very hard not to think of as _endearing_. It’s a facet she hadn’t noticed that first night, too busy attempting to climb him like a ridiculously sexy human-tree. Everything else is still gloriously the same; he’s tall and broad and present in a way that makes Rey feel like a lioness stalking her prey; hungry.

“Hi yourself,” Rey had said, returning Ben’s smile.

“Wow, okay, um,” Ben now says when Rey finally breaks away from kissing him to pull her top off. He’s staring at her with wide eyes like he can’t believe his luck, face adorably flushed. Kissing Ben is even better now that Rey can take her time with it.  She savors the taste and feel of his lips, sliding her hands up his well-built chest to his broad shoulders, and down to grip the muscle of his arms. He’s deliciously solid all over, and soft under her mouth, the juxtaposition intoxicating. He sighs against her lips, and doesn’t move his hands from her waist until she grabs them and brings them up to cover her chest, big hands engulfing her tits. He squeezes at her gently and she moans into his mouth, a jolt of pleasure making her groin go heavy.

He’s getting better by the second, carefully following in her lead, mimicking the way she licks and nudges at him.

Rey pulls away from sucking on his lips to press kisses down the long line of his neck. Ben’s head knocks back, his chest heaving.

 “We should totally do dinner one of these days,” Ben says breathlessly.

Rey hums noncommittally, not really listening. He’s speckled with beauty spots all over; she follows them like path, shoving his shirt up his chest to kiss one at the rounded curve of his pec. He’s still talking.

“Or like, the zoo or something. Or the shops a few blocks down. I found a spare part for my bike there once at a specialty shop and they’ve got all kinds of boutiques down there you might uh— _oh_ —that you might like and we could totally— _ahh_ —they have a kind of outdoor theatre? On Friday nights?”

“What?” Rey asks, distracted, pulling away from where she’d latched onto one nipple, sucking it into plumpness. “No. No zoo. Let’s—let’s be present alright.”

“Present?”

“Yes. Right here, right now. Arms up,” Rey says, and Ben obeys. She tugs his shirt off and drinks in the sight of him, leaning down to plant a kiss on his chest. His hands travel the expanse of her sides and back. She tilts her head and bites down gently on the meat of one pec. Ben makes a soft sound, _ah!_ He jolts against her and she soothes the bite with her tongue, laving over the sharp, pink marks of her teeth, licking with the flat of her tongue over his nipple.

“Good?” she asks, before kissing at another spot.

“Yes,” Ben says, sounding strangled. She feels at his crotch and finds him hard; she squeezes at him appreciatively.

“Okay,” Rey says, breathlessly. “No more zoo talk. Now take this fat cock out.”

*

The sex was just too good, that was it, Rey tells herself. It’s why she asks Ben over again the following Friday night. She’s had a shit day so they end up chilling in the living room with beer and _The Office_ re-runs before they get down to business.

They meet up at the mall two days later. Rey needs better shoes for work, is all, and a few other items and it’s just easier having someone around to carry her bags. Which Ben does, patiently and obligingly as they wander around for half the day.  Before Rey knows it, they’re seated at the teeming food court, a gigantic slice of pizza each. Ben picks his up and pretends he’s a baby bird being fed, making an extended _ahhhhh_ sound as he lowers the slice into his open mouth. It’s stupid and probably embarrassing and Rey finds herself dissolving into laughter. She kicks his foot under their table and he grins wolfishly back at her and Rey realizes something light and airy is blooming inside her chest.

“That’s _amore_ , baby,” Poe says, a couple days later. They’re lined up at the kitchen counter; Poe, Finn, and Rey, assembling tacos. It’s a house tradition Finn takes very seriously.

“Babe, no, ground meat first,” he says, tapping Poe’s hand away from the pile of cut lettuce.

“It is not,” Rey says emphatically, sprinkling a mix of grated cheese over her generously piled taco. “It’s not love, it’s, it’s—he’s just—I really like—”

She doesn’t get to finish her scrambled defense because Poe starts singing _when the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie_ and then he’s grabbing at a reluctant Finn and trying to waltz him around their tiny kitchen.

Rey retreats to her room with her tacos with as much dignity as she can muster and calls Ben immediately, heated up and ready to prove a point. He was dumb. Boys were dumb. So, so dumb, with their long hair and goofy grins and ginormous ears they tried to hide with aforementioned long hair and big dumb hands that nearly dwarfed Rey’s ribcage and their—their fucking soulful dark eyes.

“Ben!” Rey barks into the phone, startled when he picks up and says _hello_ , the deep timbre of his voice slow and sleepy.

“Hey. You okay?” Ben answers, instantly awake. There’s the rustle of what sounds like bedding in the backround, and she can almost see him in her mind’s eye, eyes wide and stupidly sincere. “Rey?”

“Hey. I uh—I just—wanted to call you,” Rey says, lamely.

“Oh,” Ben says, and he’s so relieved and happy with that one word that she slumps down on her bed and stuffs her face with a taco before she can say anything idiotic like _hi I missed you_ or _come over_ or _I think this thing might be a Thing._

*

Rey tries to hold off any serious conversation for as long as she can. Weeks pass and they go the museum and Rey tells herself it’s fine because she gets him to finger her in his car after; awkward and desperate and heated in the tiny space they have.

A few weeks later and they do end up going to the zoo. Rey lets Ben tell her about wanting to be a zoologist as a kid and traveling with his ever work-occupied parents. Ibiza sounds a lot less glamorous once Rey realizes Ben had spent most of it alone; a silent figure diving into the ocean in the early morning before the tourist-laden beaches became too crowded, and wandering the heat-warmed streets at night.

Rey never really knew her real parents, which she blurts out in front of the chimpanzee exhibit, blinking hard when her eyes go obnoxiously wet. It gets worse when Ben reaches for her hand and squeezes it tight, looking ahead at the swinging chimps and affording Rey the privacy to swipe angrily at her eyes. Rey almost wishes he could say something clichéd and awkward so she could hate him for it, but he doesn’t say anything at all, and it fills her up from somewhere soul-deep, his understanding.

The sex is slow and dreamy and amazing at Ben’s place after, like something’s been torn down between them, like they have all the time in the world.

“I wanna do this for real,” Ben says, when he’s curled over Rey and making her gasp with every thrust. His bed is ginormous and his room is bright with golden afternoon light. Rey kind of wants it to be like this forever; no words, just Ben and the steady rocking motion of his hips, the delicious stretch every time he pushes inside.

“Later,” Rey says, hoping he’ll forget, and she tugs him down for a kiss, losing her breath and hoping to lose the conversation.

*

Later comes sooner than Rey would hope. She showers and dresses and hopes Ben forgets all the blabbering she’s done today. Rey feels like she’s on thin ice, dark waters underfoot ready to drag her down if she takes a wrong step. She needs to be back on shore, alone but on steady ground, where she wouldn’t have to question where the next step will take her.

“Rey,” Ben says, as Rey squeezes at her wet hair with a towel. He’s seated on the bed looking somber. “I wanna do this for real.”

“This,” Rey repeats, blankly like she doesn’t know. She starts rubbing vigorously at her hair, thinking the movement will distract him, or maybe start a small fire so she can avoid having this conversation now, or ever.

“Yes,” Ben says emphatically, not to be swayed. He stands up and steps towards her. “This. Us. I want us to be a real thing.”

“We are a real thing,” Rey says, deliberately ignoring his meaning. She flips her hair back and shimmies her shoulders at him, grinning lasciviously, taking a few steps closer and hoping to steer him from this hideous topic.

“No.” Ben says, a smile tugging at his lips. Then, more seriously, “ _No_ , Rey.”

Rey stops shimmying her way to Ben and lets her arms fall to her side. Her chest feels like it’s going to cave in, a terrifying swoop in her belly like she’s one foot away from dropping off a ledge. _Danger, danger_ , says the alarm she’d installed after the last Thing, the warning that was supposed to stop her from ever being stupid again.

“I want us to be a real relationship. I want us to have dinner again and talk about our day and I want you to meet my parents and start planning our lives together and all that—all of it.”

Rey feels like the rug’s been pulled out from underfoot. Here is where she lists all her counter-arguments. All the reasons Ben is terrible for her; like the way he forgets to take his socks off before bed sometimes and they end up rubbing up on her legs all gross and dry. Or the way he overheats her tea every damn time or the anxious way he crosses traffic every fucking crosswalk, checking and re-checking and holding Rey’s hand too tight. She has all the Reasons lined up and waiting to spill out, ready to make her case and end this all right now.

And it all comes crumbling down the moment she meets Ben’s eyes; wide and pleading and sincere. He looks like a man awaiting a death blow, hopelessly hopeful and waiting for the worst.

“It could be terrible,” Rey chokes out. Her chest is swelling up all funny like she’s swallowed a balloon and oh god, she probably needs to get it checked out, something is seriously wrong. “We could both get hurt.” And now her eyes are inexplicably wet, her throat gone tight.

“I know,” Ben says, softly. He takes a step forward and reaches out for Rey, his big hand settling gently on her arm. “It could end badly. Or it could be fucking— _amazing_. Don’t you want amazing?”

Rey shakes her head no, then just as quickly turns it into a nod, too tired to hold back the desperate swell of need inside her. She steps into Ben’s arms and stuffs her face against his chest, swiping her tears away angrily. She clears her throat loudly so it’s clear she definitely isn’t crying about this.

“I just have—I think I’m allergic to something,” Rey chokes out. She sniffles pathetically and hugs Ben tight, squeezing him tighter. He feels solid and real and good. Like maybe he won’t ever go away, or at least not for a while.

“I know,” is all Ben says, holding Rey in his arms, stroking at her hair. “I love you too.”

 


End file.
